How can we Improve our Administrative Processes?

por Juan Carlos Medina | Dec 17, 2021 7:36:41 AM

continuous improvement at casa sauza administrative processes

At Casa Sauza, we are aware of the impact that having a more efficient and productive administration has, since it helps us automate and eliminate activities that add no value to our processes or products.

These days, many companies put all their efforts on increasing production efficiency but neglect the management and administration areas. Maybe because it does imply a challenge: to remove the fear of change in our staff so that they feel confident enough to implement a new process, one that at a first glance, may seem a little more complex than it really is. Yet, we must assume and face the new and increasingly demanding challenges that our current competitive and ever changing environment brings. And I say "must" since otherwise, we will loose our position in the market.

To the extent in which we identify our administrative processes and begin to analyze and measure them, we will be able to apply Continuous Improvement to:

  • Automate
  • Standardize
  • Eliminate activities (whose elimination would mean savings for the company)
  • Take advantage of the optimized time in order to generate knowledge by innovating and adapting to new processes

Change Management

By knowing how to manage change, we will be able to leave our routine and our comfort zone behind. Seeing change as something positive, something that will lead us to a better situation or, in this case, to a more efficient administrative process, makes all the difference. We must also keep in mind that an administration process that has been managed poorly, will lead to losses and to a low quality service for our customers.

 

  • The first thing that we need to do is to know is how our processes work, for which we will map them so well that they don't become a theoretical activity, on the contrary, this map should reflect the current situation as it is.

    In this step, all documents and activities (including those that do not add value) are identified. We should time each task so we know how log it takes to carry it out. We should also identify bottlenecks.

    Once we know the current state of our processes, we can proceed with their optimization

     

    Tool for Mapping Process

A very useful tool to analyze and visualize any business or administrative process is the Makigami Processes Map, which can be applied to any process in offices, hospitals, manufacturing lines, etc. One of the main benefits that this tool offers is that anyone can participate and contribute because they contain visual information that is easy to interpret.

Thanks to this technique, the activities become very visual and thus, improvement projects (KAIZEN) can be created in order to improve processes or to generate important savings for the company.

Analyzing Results

Once the process above is completed, we must analyze the results that we got by applying the process improvement tools that we had establish. By doing so, we can also create objective control indicators.

The objectives or goals of our "new" process -with the improvements already implemented- must be constantly monitored as the objectives may change over time, always aiming for continuous improvement.

It is just as important is to communicate the results of the implementation to the team involved in the improvement process, as well as to the whole company in general. This will generate greater empathy on the employees and at the same time, it will help them become aware of how each activity that they perform, can actually make an impact on other processes.

Based on my experience, I could say that the administration improvement carried out in Casa Sauza processes, has helped us "fall" into a virtuous cycle in which we always seek to be more efficient, which also provides us with a global vision of where we want to go as a company.

If you want to know more about Casa Sauza and its modernization processes, you can keep reading this blog or you can come to Casa Sauza and see it all for yourself. We'd be glad to show you around and share our experience with you!

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